Review – (500) Days of Summer

Turns out putting the time stream in a blender doesn’t make pedestrian romance any better. Zooey Deschanel is cute, but the rest of the picture is an annoying parade of self-pity thrown by a oh-so-typical guy who just can’t understand why his relationships fail. Mildly amusing

Review – Pretty in Pink

Here’s a mix of the dated awfulness of the 1980s and the timeless awfulness of class-conscious romance. A poor girl (Molly Ringwald in her definitive role) falls in love with a rich boy (Andrew McCarthy) but suffers abuse from his snobby friends. Though Howard Deutch directed, this is very much a creature of writer slash producer John Hughes. If Hughes had gotten the ending he wanted rather than the one that tested well with audiences, perhaps this would have been a better movie. But then again, perhaps not. Mildly amusing

Review – Silver Linings Playbook

Indie romcoms aren’t usually my thing. But every once in awhile I get a craving to see a movie in a movie theater, and this was the most interesting thing showing. It seriously got off on the wrong foot with a ton of meandering crap about a guy (Bradley Cooper) who gets out of a mental institution and starts obsessing about getting back together with his estranged wife. Though Act One drags out far longer than I would have preferred, the story takes an upturn when the protagonist meets a woman (Jennifer Lawrence) suffering from her own post traumatic stress issues. Like many other independent productions, this one works far too hard to be clever. But it does pack enough genuinely charming moments to overcome at least some of its own artiness. Mildly amusing

Review – My Best Friend’s Wedding

This is the meanest romantic comedy I’ve ever seen. Julia Roberts plays a harried writer who learns that her best friend slash longtime crush is getting married, so off she goes to Chicago to thwart his plans. Predictably enough, the resulting parade of tricks and betrayal lacks sympathetic characters, clever plot twists or anything else that might merit your attention. See if desperate

Review – Your Sister’s Sister

As if Robert Altman hadn’t already proved this, when you let actors improv in front of a camera you don’t get realism. Productions like this always seem to be after spontaneous takes on genuine human interaction. Instead they inevitably get embarrassed smirking and what-clever-line-would-my-character-say-next dialogue that makes everyone seem drunk, high or otherwise mentally impaired. This mopey indie further adds a ludicrous quasi-plot about a woman whose male best friend has secret sex with her lesbian sister. See if desperate

Review – No Strings Attached

My wife and I opted to watch this movie a day after learning of a death affecting someone close to us, figuring that a romantic comedy would be about as far as we could get from killing, horror or anything else not in keeping with the situation. So naturally in the first ten minutes the characters end up at a funeral. That notwithstanding, this is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an Ivan Reitman picture in which Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play a couple who start a relationship of sexual convenience that ends up emotionally complicated. Mildly amusing

Review – The Wedding Planner

If I put the amount of effort into this review that the filmmakers put into this movie, I’d already be done writing. A wedding planner (Jennifer Lopez) falls in love with the groom (Matthew McConaughey) of one of her clients. The assumption seems to be that the concept is strong enough to carry the picture for 90 minutes, as it develops little beyond the basic premise. Indeed, if you’re at all familiar with romcoms, you could easily come up with a better movie in your head than the one they put on the screen. See if desperate

Review – The American President

Imagine a lovelorn, widowed President getting the hots for an environmental lobbyist. Imagine Michael Douglas as the President. Imagine Annette Benning as the lobbyist. Imagine Rob Reiner directing. There, now you don’t have to see the movie. See if desperate

Review – Pay It Forward

I don’t know what pained me more, sitting through such a brazen attempt to manipulate my emotions or watching it fail so miserably at even this simple task. The idea of selflessly doing good things for other people could use a good pop culture promotion, which is why it’s such a terrible shame that this production skews good impulses into a dumb scheme by a middle school kid (Hayley Joel Osment) to match his alcoholic mom (Helen Hunt) up with his civics teacher (Kevin Spacey). Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Possession (2002)

So apparently the answer to the question "Can you make romantic comedies for intellectuals?" is "No." The thesis here is that a couple of professional academics (Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart) discover a trail of letters that romantically link a famous and supposedly happily married poet and a "spinster" (which must have been the 19th century's euphemism for "lesbian"). Their quest to uncover the details of the relationship could have been a clever bit of fun, but weaknesses in the script swiftly slay the promising premise. For starters, I found myself annoyed by the protagonists' willingness to steal documents. Does nobody have a camera phone? Was 2002 really that long ago? But more than that, the awkward dialogue kills any chance that the characters will come across as sympathetic or even human. With an extensive rewrite this might have been a much better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Picture Perfect

So let me get this straight. A single woman who devotes all her time to her job can't get promoted because she isn't married and spending time with her family? I guess I don't remember 1997 all that well. In any event, the protagonist (Jennifer Aniston) breaks through this peculiar glass ceiling by inventing a relationship with a wedding videographer (Jay Mohr) she doesn't actually know at all. So when a wacky set of circumstances force her to actually date her fake boyfriend ... well, imagine all the least imaginative directions the plot could go from there, and you can picture the rest of the picture without actually sitting through it. See if desperate

Review – Maid in Manhattan

Cinderella gets John Hughes'd and Jennifer Lopez-ized, with predictable results. A hotel maid (Lopez) who temporarily tries on a wealthy guest's clothes finds herself dating an eligible politician (Ralph Fiennes). Though this production is a bit more honest than most romantic comedies about the state of race and class distinctions in 21st century America, it's still intolerably stupid stuff. See if desperate

Review – M. Butterfly

Fans of David Cronenberg’s earlier work will probably be deeply disappointed by this odd romance between a French diplomat (Jeremy Irons) and a Chinese opera singer (John Lone) in 1960s Beijing. Sadly for our lovelorn protagonist, he doesn’t seem to know much about traditional Chinese opera performers. Or he simply doesn’t care. In addition to the complex nature of their relationship, the politics of the time add an espionage angle to the mix. The result is a drawn-out portrait of a successful man undone by his own obsessions, a pretty picture with no greater purpose than to make the observation that love tends to follow its own path. Mildly amusing

Review – The Accidental Tourist

I can’t say if it was subtle differences between the book and the movie, the passage of time between the two experiences or some other less tangible factor, but I didn’t like the movie anywhere near as much as I liked the book. The characters’ quirks seemed superficial rather than genuine. William Hurt was particularly awful. He’s proven on any number of occasions that he can plan an emotionally distant man, but when he’s called upon to let the wall drop and show some feeling, he looks more as if he’s having a particularly unpleasant hemorrhoidal flare-up. Nor can he make the slightest emotional connection with either fellow Body Heat alum Kathleen Turner as his estranged wife or Geena Davis as his wacky would-be girlfriend. Thus what in the book was a charming little story about an author who writes travel guides for people who hate to travel becomes a muddled mess of a motion picture. See if desperate

Review – The Proposal

Just about every grade school class has that one kid who can’t stop himself from eating the Elmer’s Glue. He knows it doesn’t taste good. He knows it’s bad for him. Most of the time he can control it, but every once in awhile the urge overcomes his better judgment. I think I’m that way with romantic comedies. Despite their omnipresence, on most occasions I can deftly avoid them. But every once in awhile – especially at the end of a long week or after watching something particularly heinous that I’m trying to forget – I’ll give in and let one run. So that’s my excuse for watching this. The boss from hell (Sandra Bullock) is in danger of being deported to Canada, so she bullies her hapless assistant (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her. To get an officious bureaucrat off their backs, they’re forced to fly to Alaska to spend the weekend with his family. Predictability ensues. Indeed, this follows the standard formula so closely that you can pretty much see the whole rest of the movie in your head without spending any time actually watching it. Mildly amusing

Review – The Hottie and the Nottie

Though this is plenty terrible, it wasn’t quite the travesty of the cinema arts that some critics made it out to be. The perpetually talentless Paris Hilton stars as a beautiful, unobtainable woman who won’t date the homely, talentless protagonist unless and until he can find true love for her homely, talentless best friend. Overall the picture was a witless parade of date movie clichés that failed to leave much of an impression one way or another. See if desperate

Review – You’ve Got Mail

The Shop Around the Corner gets Nora-Ephron-ized in this goofy romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. She’s the owner of a small bookstore fighting for its life against a huge corporate operation moving in nearby. He’s the heir to the corporate fortune. They establish a love/hate relationship with the love part conducted anonymously via AOL. I found the death-of-the-independent-bookstore stuff extremely depressing, so much so that it actually interfered with my ability to enjoy the rest of the movie. Also, try as I might, I have trouble imagining anyone falling in love with Tom Hanks (even on the Internet where she doesn’t know who he really is). That notwithstanding, as a romantic comedy it fulfills the usual genre requirements. Mildly amusing

Review – One Wonderful Sunday

Though this early Kurosawa picture is as laconic as the title day, its subtle, honest optimism is probably exactly what moviegoers in postwar Japan needed. A young couple with very little spending money try to have the best day off they can. The day presents them with a series of ups and downs, the upshot of which is that happiness is possible without money. Indeed, money seems to get in the way of happiness. To be sure, it gets a bit too sentimental in the end, particularly the breaking-the-fourth-wall “Peter Pan” moment. Overall, however, it’s a charming, uplifting little picture. Worth seeing

Review – The Blue Lagoon

Imagine growing up on an isolated island with no adults or social norms to help you make sense of things like sex. The premise has potential. Unfortunately the folks behind the cameras seem as naïve about movie-making as the two protagonists are about lovemaking. Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins get the bulk of the screen time, as one might suspect from their marooned status. Likewise the cinematography is predictably pretty. The script, on the other hand, is laughably dumb, like some horrible Harlequin romance version of Lord of the Flies. See if desperate

Review – Penelope

After watching a depressing documentary, I decided I needed a light comedy to brighten my mood a bit. This met the need nicely. Christina Ricci stars as a woman cursed to have the nose of a pig until she can get a fellow British blue-blood to marry her. High jinks ensue. Occasionally the self-esteem-y stuff gets a bit preachy, especially toward the end. But otherwise it’s cute, occasionally clever, and uniformly undemanding. Mildly amusing